CONSIDER ENCHANTMENT

Apprenticeship to Love: July 26, 2025

• Today’s question: Is this moment of your life enchanting you? Or is it disenchanting? And what could you do, to open, again, to its wonders, while still aware of its pains and its difficulties?

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Rev. Hans Peter Meyer

TODAY’S MEDITATION

The same as it ever was.

This morning I'm feeling disenchanted with the world. Again, the court of law, in a high profile case, cannot make the moral judgement that the case calls for. It can only make the legal judgement. And so the culture of privilege and excuse –"boys will be boys!"– allows a few young men, and many, many more older men, to imagine that the way we traffic young women is permissable.

The same as it ever was.

Something closes, with this judgement. Within me. And around me.

We wonder, we men who are so unconscious of our privileges and, even more profoundly, our safety in the world –we wonder, Why can't I know more often and more deeply the fruits of this life?

Perhaps because we squander what we're given? We take Her for granted, this glorious flow of life and love and sex and beauty that visits us, now and then, if we're lucky?

...

The world calls us, calls our awareness, to open to Her gifts. To be nourished. She would give birth to our dreams, if we allowed Her to enter our hearts.

I am these days reminded of this, often. I am reminded how easy it is for me to close, to protect myself, to not trust Her flow and flowering. It's a strange thing, to resist Her enchantment.

...

Stephen Jenkinson, talks about enchantment in the context of matrimony and culture.

“The old meaning of enchanted is something like this: “I have been conjured and called by you, and consequence and the stuff of life are at hand, and many a thing has come to light, and just now, having met you, the river of my longing for life knows the shore that gives it its course and reason.”

A year ago I listened to a young woman in love with a man who could not open to her enchantments. He was afraid. He knew that, opening to her fully, he would be changed. He sensed that, changed, enchanted, he would surrender to her as the the witch, the oracle, the siren, the one whose “too much” is exactly what is required for him to be the man he cannot imagine himself to be.

The only way, for him to become himself, was to allow himself to become enchanted. Allowing himself to experience her deeper beauty, her deeper and darker power. For many of us men, this is a terrifying prospect.

If you are a man standing on this threshold of becoming, beware the distraction of your desire for safety, and your sexual desire.

If you are a woman, standing on your own threshold of changing a man into the greater and superior man that lies within him, beware the distraction of your sexual desire.

...

Our desire is true. We long for something beyond ourselves. Our experience of our sexuality hints at this. But too often we get lost in the sweetness of the flesh and the chasing of the little deaths. Rarely do we have the guidance or the discipline to fall into the mystery of our desire. It is in this mystery, in the enchantment of it, that we may discover the truth of our desire.

...

What does it mean, to "say grace?" And what would it mean, to take a moment before and after every bit of nourishment, to bow my head. To say, Thank you.

I remember doing this, at one time in my life. Surrendering myself, fully, to her offering. Allowing myself to be enchanted, to feel the holiness of what we were doing, together. Without protection, or doubt.

What happened? It's painful to remember. And painful to think how insensitive I was to the gifts and offerings that were made to me, subsequently. I'm still grieving. Perhaps more so today than in all the years that have passed since I was aware of how beautifully enchanted my life was, in that moment.

...

It's a hard thing, to acknowledge myself as insensitive. Unimaginative. Resistant to enchantment.

So I practice. Breathing. Opening this heart, the front of this body. Taking time. Allowing her to flow as she needs to flow. Learning to trust what is beyond my understanding and my will to understand. Learning to trust the process of enchantment. It is a hard practice. I am called to confront my regrets, and acknowledging them, to open into what mystery lies beyond.

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE

Receive. Surrender, and receive. Take the risk, and allow yourself to become enchanted.

The next Apprenticeship to Love virtual workshop will focus on intimacy practices that will help you, as a man or as a woman, to trust yourself with enchantment. To register please see sacredbodies.ca/forintimacy